How NathanielMc started their web page design journey

Summary

After having such great success tapping the powers of the community here at 99designs for our logo (157 submissions - thanks!), we are reaching out to ask for your help in creating a few pages for our social network application building platform. The functionality is there, but things are not as attractive as we'd like them. The product is called yasnap, which humorously stands for Yet another social networking application. The site will allow a visitor to create a facebook (and others) application from scratch in 10 minutes without prior programming experience. We'd like your help to create 2 pages that match the spirit of the product and our logo.

Company name

yasnap

What inspires you and how do you envision the design for your business?

Now that we have a great logo (thanks to winger and the other 156 submissions), we want to create 2 pages for our site. The pages are:

(1) application detail page

(2) a detailed edit page

[(3) homepage -- optional ]

We have a home page that we like, and a very rough mock up for the application homepage and a screenshot from an edit page.

yasnap allows a user to create an application for facebook (and other sites coming soon) in about ten minutes. This page shows the user what their application looks like as well as some summary data about how it is performing.

This page needs the most work. At the top, we'd like to have a common branding & navigation for most of our pages. The content of this page consists of dynamically generated 'previews', and some feedback data. The 'previews' show what the users application will look like in facebook.

We are interested in exploring different ways (borders, backgrounds, etc) to make the previews stand out on the page so it looks distinct from other elements on the page. It's a bit of a design challenge to think of ways to convey that our site lets you build applications that run on facebook and other sites. You can use the facebook image and the one immediately below that in your designs to help represent where that element would appear on the page.

Detailed edit page

This page is where a user would be editing the different elements of the application, where each tab would represent a different stage in the editing process. We may need to add (or subtract) buttons at a future time.

We would like for this page to re-use the branding and navigation that is developed in the application homepage. The design work should focus on the tabbed browsing sub-navigation element. The navigation doesn't have to be tabs if you have other creative ideas, though tabs seem like the most logical implementation. Like on the application homepage, previews of the applications will be shown so we want to find a way that expresses that the image is representative of what is seen on facebook (or other social networks). We are interested in exploring different ways (borders, backgrounds, etc) to make the previews stand out on the page so it looks distinct from other elements on the page. It's a bit of a design challenge to think of ways to convey that our site lets you build applications that run on facebook and other sites. You can use the facebook image in your designs to help represent where that element would appear on the page.

Homepage. (optional)

We like the simplicity and general layout of the homepage, but feel it could be improved a bit (our tech guy is awesome, but design isn't his thing). The simplicity of the page is important to focus people's attention to help us make the form box and button enticing to use. The examples underneath the box are dynamically generated based on what the user types in. This page does not need to have the same branding and navigation as the other pages.

We have chosen pink as the tentative color of our logo. However, you may explore putting it on different backgrounds in the branding & navigation or even changing the color.

Here are some characteristics we hope to embody: fun, quick, snappy, web 2.0, and youthful. We want something simple, but which captures the thought of creation, creativity, and intelligence, but which has a fun persona. The key selling points for the site are speed, simplicity, and creating fun fast. We are flexible on color choice and are open to bright and eye catching colors.

We like the perspective that is shared on this website for site design for Web 2.0 companies:

Our organization is a small group of geeks that are trying to do something fun online. We believe that social networking application creation should not be limited to a few people who know how to code, but should be open to anyone. We don't take ourselves too seriously, but are excited about the work that we are doing.

Although we think we will eventually pick one winner that provides all three designs, we are open to offering prizes for both pages (e.g., 1&2 above) for a total prize of $500.

Please feel free to start by submitting one of these pages if you want. We plan on giving quick feedback (e.g., hopefully within 12-24 hrs) and working with anyone who wants to engage with us.

Wants

- Simplicity
- Nice top nav bar based on our logo
- a background that makes screenshots obvious
- [an inviting entry form on the first page -- optional]
- start small - pick a single element that intrigues you and get the ball rolling
- 900-1000 pixel fixed width design
- stick to "web-safe" fonts: Arial, Courier New, Georgia, Times New Roman, Verdana, Trebuchet MS, Lucida Sans; exceptions must be justified

Don't want

- No references to facebook, myspace, etc in anyway (except for the images pulled from our sample pages)